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THE RELATION OF PHILIP PHILLIPS 

TO THE REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI 

COMPROMISE IN 1854 



BY 

HENRY BARRETT LEARNED 




Reprinted from the Mississippi 
Vallby Historical Review 
Vol. VIII, No. 4, March, 1922 



& 



M3 



THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 
HISTORICAL REVIEW 

Vol. VIII, No. 4 March, 1922 



THE RELATION OF PHILIP PHILLIPS TO THE REPEAL 
OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE IN 1854 x 

Here and there in the annals of American history several 
rather casual references may be found to a lawyer and publicist 
who died in Washington, D. C, on January 14, 1884, almost 
thirty-eight years ago. To Philip Phillips, known familiarly to 
his friends in the fifties of the last century as "Colonel" 
Phillips, the bar of the supreme court of the United States paid 
tribute in February following his death ; and simple resolutions 
to his honorable memory as a man and a lawyer were duly re- 
corded in the files of that court at the request of George F. 
Edmunds, republican senator from Vermont. 2 In the course of 
the tributes there were a few suggestions of days then long 
past when as a democratic representative from the Mobile dis- 
trict of Alabama Colonel Phillips, sitting in the sessions of the 
thirty-third congress, had taken part in activities and counsels 
associated with the troubled passage to law in May, 1854, of the 
Kansas-Nebraska bill. Bitterness of feeling and acrimony over 
that act which once divided parties and aroused the heat of the 
slavery issue north and south into a hot flame have, it may 
be assumed to-day, passed away long since. But problems still 
difficult and perhaps impossible of precise solution which arose 
out of the situation are likely for some time to come to interest 
students of history. On one of these problems the following con- 
siderations may throw a side light. 

As far back as 1874 Henry Wilson, in his work on the History 

i This paper was read at a meeting of the American historical association held 
in St. Louis, December 29, 1921. 

2 In memoriam. Proceedings of the supreme court of the United Stales on the 
death of Philip Phillips and the action of the court thereon (Washington, 1884). 



304 Henry Barrett Learned m. v. h. r. 

of the rise and fall of the slave power in America, referred 
casually to Philip Phillips. 3 More recently Mr. Ray, in his study 
of the questions of the origin and authorship of the repeal of 
the Missouri compromise, has shown that he was aware of 
Colonel Phillips' special interest in the repeal, like that of many 
another southerner. 4 And John Bach McMaster, in the eighth 
volume of his history published in 1913, cited in a footnote a 
passage from Phillips' autobiography, a copy of which he found 
in the manuscript collections of the Library of congress. 5 No 
one, however, has yet taken the trouble to examine Phillips' 
work during January, 1854, while the Nebraska bill was under- 
going a process of change. The problem of considering 
Phillips' contribution to that process is simplified by the fact 
that all essential changes in the bill appear to have occurred be- 
tween January 4 and February 7. 

The chief author of the Kansas-Nebraska bill was Senator 
Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. Addressing Douglas in the 
senate on February 23, 1855 — just a year after the leading 
events which come within the range of this consideration — 
Senator Wade of Ohio burst out in this wise : "I ask the gentle- 
man if his Nebraska bill was not concocted by a secret conclave, 
in the night time?" "No, sir," answered Douglas, "the 
Nebraska bill was not concocted in any conclave, night or day. 
It was written by myself, at my own house, with no man pres- 
ent. " e In making this direct reply the senator from Illinois 
was thinking of hours of labor put by him on the amended 
Nebraska bill which as chairman of the senate committee on 
territories he had reported to the senate on Wednesday, 
January 4, 1854. Probably he recalled at the same time, 
a little vaguely, the special report which accompanied on 
that momentous day the amended bill. Could he, it may 
fairly be asked, have wholly forgotten the leading circumstances 
which forced, in January days following, the process of altera- 

3 (Boston, 1872-1877), 2:383. 

4 P. Orman Ray, The repeal of the Missouri compromise. Its origin and author- 
ship (Cleveland, 1909), 213, 214; compare Ray, "The genesis of the Kansas- 
Nebraska act," in American historical association, Annual report, 1914 (Washington, 
1916), 1:267. 

s A history of tJw people of the United States (New York, 1885-1913), 8:195. 
« Congressional globe, 33 congress, 2 session, appendix, 216. 






Vol. viii, No. 4 Repeal of the Missouri Compromise 305 

tion and change of which at the time, in 1854, he must have been 
fully cognizant? We know now that the repeal of the Missouri 
compromise — the most significant feature of the matured bill 
which became law on May 30, 1854 — was worked into Douglas' 
bill between January 4 and February 7. The writer will try to 
show what Colonel Philip Phillips, then a representative from 
Alabama, had to do with this particular feature of the bill. 

For several years prior to 1854 efforts had been made to 
organize a government for Nebraska territory, a vast region 
containing almost half a million square miles of land inhabited 
by a few hundred white settlers and by scattered tribes of In- 
dians. The region was all that was left of the Louisiana pur- 
chase ; it extended northward from the Arkansas river and New 
Mexico to the Canadian border, and westward from Missouri to 
the Rocky mountains; it included the present states of Kansas, 
Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and a 
part of Colorado. It was a veritable empire, almost unknown 
in character, but promising future developments tempting in 
political, social, and industrial directions. A comparatively 
recent attempt to organize its government had failed at the close 
of the thirty-second congress in March, 1853. In December 
f ollowing, soon after the opening of the first session of the thirty- 
third congress, Senator Dodge of Iowa reintroduced the old 
measure. It was this bill elaborated and revised which Douglas 
brought forward on January 4, accompanied by a special report. 

Observe that the Douglas bill contained on January 4 no 
reference to the Missouri compromise. Only two sections of the 
bill, sections 14 and 21, touched upon slavery. The important 
one of these declared among other things that, so far as the 
question of slavery was concerned, the bill was designed to carry 
into practical operation the principles established by the com- 
promise measures of 1850; "all questions," it said, "pertaining 
to slavery in the Territories, and in the new states to be formed 
therefrom, are to be left to the decision of the people residing 
therein, through their appropriate representatives." 7 

The special report went into sundry details and was explana- 
tory of the bill. It quoted exactly the well-known eighth section 
of the act admitting Missouri as a state in 1820 — a section which 

i Section 21. 



306 Henry Barrett Learned m.v.h.r, 

excluded slavery forever from the region of the Louisiana pur- 
chase north of 36° 30' . It gave evidence that Douglas or his com- 
mittee had taken carefully into the reckoning the controversy be- 
tween north and south that might arise over the question of 
slavery in the Nebraska region. But it recommended neither an 
affirmation nor a repeal of the eighth section of the old Missouri 
act. ' ' Your committee, ' ' said the report, "do not feel themselves 
called upon to enter into the discussion of these controverted 
questions. They involve the same grave issues which produced 
the agitation, the sectional strife, and the fearful struggle of 
1850. " 8 

Considered together, the revised bill and the special report are 
evidence sufficient to account for the prompt arousing of con- 
troversy, for neither the bill nor the special report left a clear 
impression. Intended as an interpretation of the bill, the re- 
port was especially startling in at least three respects: (1) It 
forced into a general principle phraseology drawn from the com- 
promise measures of 1850 and hitherto considered applicable only 
to Utah and New Mexico, so far as slavery was concerned. Re- 
ferring to this aspect of Douglas' position, the Washington Daily 
Union said: "He plants himself resolutely upon the compromise 
of 1850 as a final settlement — not final merely as to the Territo- 
ries then in dispute, but final as to all future legislation for terri- 
torial governments." 9 Again, (2) it voiced the views of a north- 
ern democrat from Illinois, easily the leader in the senate of his 
party — a party which had won its presidential victory largely 
on the ground of promising peace, if not silence, on the slavery 
issue. Finally, (3) it called attention to the conflict of opinion 
existing in the country over the question of the constitutional 
validity of the Missouri act of 1820. In this aspect of the report 
the New York Tribune was quick to detect trouble. "An overt 
attempt is set on foot," it declared, "in Mr. Douglas's Nebraska 
bill to override the Missouri Compromise." Then, after quoting 
exactly the language of the well-known eighth section of the 
Missouri act, it continued: "This plain and unequivocal 
a , declaration that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall 

V I $ Senate reports, 33 congress, 1 session, no. 15, 1:30. Printed also in the 

Washington Daily Union, January 6, 1854, and in the National Intelligencer (Wash- 
ington, D. C), January 7. 
9 January 5, 1854. 



Vol. viii, No. 4 R e p ea i f the Missouri Compromise 307 

ever exist in our Northwest Territories is unceremoniously 
bustled aside by Mr. Douglas, who makes the Compromise 
measures of 1850 the scapegoat for his sin in doing it." 10 

Hardly more than a week elapsed after the appearance of the 
bill and the special report before the newspapers north and south 
were commenting on the question of the repeal of the Missouri 
compromise. Had that repeal been contemplated, it was asked, 
by the makers of the Nebraska bill ? By the following February 
7 the bill had been elaborated and so altered that its language 
was perfectly clear in respect to the doubtful point. In other 
words, Douglas' final amendment offered to the senate on that 
day declared the eighth section of the act of March 6, 1820, to be 
"inoperative and void." And this language went unchanged 
into the law. 11 

The first attempt publicly to bring about the repeal of the 
Missouri compromise by the introduction of an amendment to 
that effect into the language of the Nebraska bill was made by a 
southern whig, Senator Archibald Dixon, a Kentucky slaveholder. 
Brought to the attention of the senate on Monday, January 16, 
the Dixon amendment was designed to be the concluding section 
— section 22 — of the bill in its then existent form. The amend- 
ment called for the withdrawal of the eighth section of the old 
Missouri act of 1820 from application to the Nebraska territory 
and permitted citizens of all states and territories "to take and 
hold their slaves within any of the territories of the United 
States, or of the States to be formed therefrom, as if the said 
act . . . had never been passed." That the injection of the 
Dixon amendment into the situation greatly disturbed Douglas 
there is good ground for believing. 12 But that the incident prob- 
ably tended toward quickening the process of reshaping the 
bill of January 4 is likewise clear. 

Although it is true that the Dixon amendment as such never 

io January 6, 1854. 

11 In tracing the course of the Nebraska bill — known as S. 22 and H. E. 236 — 
the writer has depended upon the original printed files of bills to be found in the 
Library of congress and known as Senate bills, 33 congress, 1 session (1853-1854) 
and House of representatives, Bills and resolutions, for the same congress. The 
Kansas-Nebraska act, signed by President Pierce on May 30, 1854, is in Unite. I 
States, Statutes at large, 10:277-290. 

12 Archibald Dixon to Henry S. Foote, September 30, 1858, in H. M. Flint, Life 
of Stephen A. Douglas (New York, 1860), 172-173. 



308 Henry Barrett Learned m.v. h. b. 

became law, it had the effect promptly to bring out and sharply 
to define the issue. The tumult of popular discussion, already 
loud, became louder. During the week following January 16 
politicians in the national capital became extraordinarily active. 
Among leaders and their following there was much discussion 
over the possible repeal of a time-honored measure. Sharp 
editorials appeared on the Nebraska question. Judging from 
them and from some variety of letters written by Washington 
correspondents, it was evident that the attitude of the adminis- 
tration, that is to say, of President Pierce and his cabinet 
advisers, was frequently a matter of serious doubt and grave 
question. In brief, the mere proposal of the Dixon amendment 
helped markedly toward a reopening of the question of slavery 
extension. That, it appeared, was the real issue of the day. 

It is at this point in the consideration that the figure of Colonel 
Philip Phillips of Alabama should be brought into view. It was 
about this time — in January, 1854— that as a member of the 
house committee on territories he formulated in writing an 
amendment which was designed, like Dixon's, to repeal the 
Missouri compromise. Unlike Dixon's, what may be called the 
Phillips amendment was never given publicity either at the time 
of its formulation or later. In the long course of debates in 
congress there was no reference made to it. Its language, so 
far as the writer can discover, has never been printed. To-day 
it is to be found only on a copy of the original print of the bill 
of January 4 — presumably Colonel Phillips' own copy used at 
the time that the bill was pending in the senate committee — 
and in a slightly different form on a loose sheet of blue letter 
paper on which it was probably first drafted. Both drafts are 
in a collection of family papers which were deposited several 
years ago by Mr. P. Lee Phillips, Colonel Phillips' son, in the 
Library of congress. That the Phillips amendment was known 
to Senator Douglas and to a few other leading members of the 
thirty-third congress is certain. Abundant evidence, although 
largely circumstantial and indirect, reveals Colonel Phillips as 
an active worker for the repeal. If he worked often behind the 
scenes, in caucus or conference or conclave (as he undoubtedly 
did work) , he had, nevertheless, a part in the general process that 



vol. viii, No. 4 Repeal of the Missouri Compromise 309 

after January 4 was making for the reshaping of the Nebraska 
bill. What Dixon attempted to accomplish in a public way 
Colonel Phillips attempted to bring about quietly and un- 
obtrusively. While neither Dixon nor Phillips can be con- 
sidered the author of the repeal, both men worked for the con- 
summation of the repeal in the language of the law and helped 
forward the process by means of which it was clearly set in the 
statute of May 30. 

Philip Phillips served for only a single term in the national 
house of representatives, from December, 1853, to March, 1855, 
and retired at his own request. Political position and prefer- 
ment were merely incidents in his long life. His chief work was 
that of a lawyer who took rank before his death in January, 
1884, as a jurist of unusual distinction. From the close of the 
civil war he made his home in Washington, D. C. There as a 
member of a group of lawyers known in those days as ' ' the bar 
of the Supreme Court of the United States" he served lawyers 
outside that group after the maimer of a barrister. Before the 
supreme court he presented or argued hundreds of cases after 
1865. He was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in December, 
1807. He was partly educated there and as a youth was sent 
to New England to continue his studies at the famous academy 
of Captain Alden Partridge, 13 where, from 1823 to 1826, he must 
have known as a fellow student for a year or so Gideon Welles, 
later secretary of the navy under Presidents Lincoln and John- 
son. He was admitted to the bar of South Carolina in 1828. 
Four years later he was a member of the South Carolina con- 
stitutional convention, in which he opposed the doctrine of 
nullification. He served for a short time in the South Carolina 
legislature. He was not thirty years old when he decided to 
remove to Mobile. From there he was twice sent to the Alabama 
state legislature. In 1852 he appeared as a delegate at the Balti- 
more convention which nominated Franklin Pierce of New 
Hampshire as the democratic candidate for the presidency. 
At the very outset of his term in the thirty-third congress he 
was put upon the house committee on territories. As' a member 
of this committee he felt called upon to work for what he con- 

13 For a sketch of Partridge and his influence, see Henry B. Learned, "Captain 
Alden Partridge," in the Nation, 90:554-555. 



310 Henry Barrett Learned M.v. H. R. 

ceived to be the true interests of his party and his section of the 
south — the repeal of the Missouri compromise. 14 

The Phillips amendment read as follows: "That the people 
of the Territory through their Territorial legislature may legis- 
late upon the subject of slavery in any manner they may think 
proper not inconsistent with the Constitution of the United 
States, and all laws or parts of laws inconsistent with this 
authority or right shall, from and after the passage of this act, 
become inoperative, void and of no force and effect." 15 

We are without contemporary evidence as to the time at which 
Colonel Phillips felt called upon to formulate this proposition. 
Kef erring to the subject rather more than six years later — on 
August 24, 1860 — he said that he had formulated it "a few days 
after the introduction of the bill ' ' of January 4. 16 At any rate, 
he wrote it into an original printed copy of that bill, as it already 
has been stated. And from the time of the appearance of that 
particular form of the bill he can probably be reckoned as among 
those observers who regarded the Douglas draft of the Nebraska 
bill as lacking in clearness on the subject of slavery in the 
territory. The Dixon amendment, it will be remembered, was 
put in strong language and called directly for a repeal of the 
eighth section of the Missouri act of 1820. Phillips ' proposition, 
by comparison, was designed to accomplish in the end the same 
thing, for it too would have made the old law, so far as it applied 

14 For this account the writer has relied largely on a careful sketch of Philip 
Phillips to be found in William A. Ellis, Norwich university, 1819-1911 : her history, 
her graduates, her roll of honor (Montpelier, Vermont, 1911), 2:199-200. 

15 Copied from a scrap of blue paper in Phillips' handwriting. The slightly 
different formulation of the amendment, also in Phillips' handwriting, on the 
original printed copy of the bill as presented on January 4, shows that Phillips 
intended that his amendment should be inserted in section 1 of that bill. This 
second formulation reads: "And that the people of said Territory through the 
territorial Legislature hereafter provided may legislate upon the subject of Slavery 
in any manner they may think proper not inconsistent with the principles of the 
Constitution of the TJ. S. — And all laws or parts of laws inconsistent with this 
authority or right shall, from and after the passage of this act, be and become in- 
operative, void, and of no force and effect." To this he adds a comment: 1 "This 
is a proposition of my own submitted to Senator Hunter and others, [initialed] 
P. P." 

i' 6 See Phillips ' letter entitled ' ' The repeal of the Missouri act, ' ' dated August 
24, 1860, at Washington, D. C, and printed the next day in the Constitution (Wash- 
ington, D. C). In this letter the writer recalled interviews with Douglas and 
President Pierce in 1854. 



vol. viii, No. 4 B e p ea i f the Missouri Compromise 311 

to the Nebraska region, void and inoperative. But its language 
was less direct. It was probably formulated a few days after 
Dixon's amendment of January 16. Near that time it was sub- 
mitted to Senator Hunter of Virginia and to a few others 
actively interested in having the Missouri compromise repealed. 
That is as much as can now be said. 

Bef erring in 1860 to the Douglas first draft of the Nebraska 
bill, Phillips wrote that he remembered that the bill "contained 
the same provision as had been engrafted on the acts of 1850 for 
organizing New Mexico and Utah, to wit : 'That when admitted 
as a State the said Territory shall be received into the Union 
with or without slavery, as their constitutions may prescribe at 
the time of their admission. ' ' ' He continued in this wise : ' ' The 
consideration of this subject was presented to my mind as a 
member of the House committee specially charged with it, and 
believing that the provision referred to could not work out the 
equality and fairness which on its face it promised, while a 
statute existed which completely excluded slaveholders from 
settling in the Territory up to the very period of inaugurating 
the State constitution, I submitted to a distinguished southern 
Senator ... a written proposition for the repeal of this 8th 
section. ... In the meantime Mr. Dixon of Kentucky, a southern 
Whig, had given notice in the Senate that he would propose the 
repeal." 1T 

It may be at once remarked that, in assuming in 1860 that his 
proposition of 1854 involved a direct repeal of the eighth section 
of the Missouri act, Phillips went rather too far and claimed too 
much. But that he was active and probably influential in help- 
ing to shape the ultimate form of the repeal is, the writer thinks, 
true. 

An unusual occurrence on Sunday, January 22, 1854, caught 
the attention of several Washington correspondents: a con- 
ference or conclave, doubtless intended to be kept secret, was 
held on that day at the White House. It was held just, the day 
before Senator Douglas submitted for the second time to the 
senate his Nebraska bill markedly altered and including pro- 
visions for the organization of two territories, Nebraska and 
Kansas, and expressly "superseding" the eighth section of the 

i7 Constitution, August 25, 1860. 



312 Henry Barrett Learned m.v. h. r. 

Missouri act of 1820 — declared " inoperative" — by the prin- 
ciples of the compromise measures of 1850. Naturally this con- 
ference at the White House was looked upon as an incident of 
peculiar interest and, in quarters hostile to the administration, 
with great suspicion. It was assumed, generally speaking, that 
this secret meeting established or fixed the attitude of the 
president and his cabinet, hitherto considered to be doubtful, as 
in favor of the new form of the bill ; in other words, as in favor 
of the doctrine of "superseding" the troublesome section of the 
Missouri act by the more recent law of 1850. Although the 
word "repeal" did not occur in the language of the bill, never- 
theless the bill was understood to involve the design of a repeal. 

There are several accounts of this White House meeting of 
January 22. The Washington correspondent of the Netv York 
Herald wrote a letter regarding it on the next day, January 23, 
which appeared in print on Tuesday, January 24. He had 
gathered impressions from some unknown source, impressions 
which sounded as though he had gained them from a participant ; 
and his story, told with considerable detail, appeared to be 
plausible. Twenty-five years later, in September, 1879, Jeffer- 
son Davis wrote for Mrs. Archibald Dixon an account of the 
meeting as he remembered it. 18 In June, 1876, Philip Phillips, 
a participant at the meeting, set down recollections of it in the 
course of a fragmentary autobiography intended for his children. 
It is quite the most explicit record of the meeting now known to 
exist. 

According to all accounts, the meeting was held for the pur- 
pose of obtaining President Pierce's approval of the new form 
of the Nebraska bill with its startling and novel doctrine of 
"superseding" one law by another. This approval, it is agreed, 
was then and there obtained. In brief, the administration be- 
came committed to a formulation — at the moment, to be sure, 
in process of development toward a more definite and final 
formulation — that after February 7 made fairly secure the 
actual repeal of the Missouri compromise restricting line, if the 
bill became law. 

!* Mrs. Archibald DLxon, The tribe history of the Missouri compromise and its 
repeal (Cincinnati, 1899), 458. Compare Jefferson Davis, The rise and fall of the 
confederate government (New York, 1881), 1:27-28. 



Vol. viii, No. 4 Repeal of the Missouri Compromise 313 

No quite definite conclusion can be reached at present as to 
the time at which, the meeting took place. Davis' record makes 
it appear to have been held on Sunday morning, perhaps before 
the hour of church. The account in the Herald set no time. 
Phillips' record asserts that the meeting, prearranged by 
Senator Douglas, occurred soon after nine o'clock in the evening. 

Who took part in the conference? According to Jefferson 
Davis, at the time President Pierce's secretary of war, he 
arranged for the meeting and was present. Phillips, on the 
other hand, makes no reference to Davis. Besides himself, 
Phillips says that the president saw at the conference Senators 
Douglas, Atchison of Missouri, R. M. T. Hunter and James M. 
Mason of Virginia, and Representatives William 0. Goode of 
Virginia and John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. In respect to 
steps taken preliminary to the conference, he names also Senator 
A. P. Butler of South Carolina as having a share. The 
correspondent of the Herald thought that Senator Jesse D. 
Bright of Indiana was present — like Douglas a northern Demo- 
crat. From Phillips' record it would appear that Atchison and 
Douglas acted as the leaders of the group. 

Phillips related that shortly after January 4, moved by his 
conviction that the Douglas bill of that date was confusing rather 
than clear on the question of slavery extension in the Nebraska 
territory, he first expressed this thought to his friend, Senator 
Hunter, and to a few others. Somewhat later in the month he 
sought out David Atchison, then acting president of the senate 
by reason of the death in April, 1853, of Vice President William 
R. King of Alabama, and confided to him his view of the Douglas 
measure. A brief conference followed, perhaps on the next day 
— a conference in which Atchison, Douglas, and Phillips took 
part. On Thursday, we are told — presumably January 19, 
three days after the Dixon amendment had been brought to 
public attention — Senator Douglas and Representative Breckin- 
ridge called on Phillips; on this occasion, at the request of 
Douglas, Phillips drafted his form of amendment already 
quoted. 19 Soon after this, probably on the next day (Friday), 
a conference "in the rear of the Patent Office" was held between 
Mm and a few leading politicians, mostly senators; and this 

is See ante, p. 310. 



314 Henry Barrett Learned m.v. h. r, 

group, apparently in sympathy with Phillips' thought, agreed to 
the form of his proposed amendment and authorized Phillips to 
communicate their conclusion to Douglas. This was done by 
Phillips on Saturday, January 21. That same day, according to 
Phillips' recollection, Douglas arranged with President Pierce 
for the White House conference that took place on Sunday, per- 
haps in the evening. 20 

It is worth observing that in these secret arrangements 
Douglas appears to have been the only man of the senate com- 
mittee on territories taking any part, and that Philip Phillips 
was the single member of the house committee who is mentioned. 
Yet the probabilities are that others, not named and not present, 
knew what was going on. In any such matter heavy with con- 
sequences Douglas would have taken merely the lead, fortified as 
he was by Atchison's approval and presence, to say nothing of 
that of the others. 

While it is true that the details of any such meeting as that 
which took place on Sunday, January 22, 1854, can never be 
exactly known, we need be in no great doubt as to its essential 
object in the light of such circumstances as can be verified. Re- 
ferring to President Pierce on that Sunday, Jefferson Davis, 
whose account can probably be trusted on this aspect of the 
matter, wrote: ''When the bill had been fully explained to him, 
its text, its intent, and its purpose, he, as anticipated, declared 
his opinion in its favor, and the gentlemen left him with the 
assurance they came to obtain before testing the question of their 
bill before the two Houses of Congress." 21 According to 
Phillips' statement, President Pierce met the committee "in the 
library" of the White House. Douglas and Atchison, having 
driven there ahead of the others, were with the president. "I 
was struck," wrote Phillips, "by the cold formality which 
seemed to prevail. The subject was soon entered upon ; but I 
do not propose to repeat what occurred, further than this : the 
President said, 'Gentlemen, you are entering a serious under- 

20 Details of a more or less picturesque kind can be found in the manuscript 
fragment of Phillips' autobiography. The writer has examined the Marcy papers 
for additional light, but without result. When the papers of Caleb Gushing or those 
of John C. Breckinridge become available to the investigator, perhaps several 
questions now unanswerable will then be solved. 

21 Dixon, History of the Missouri compromise and its repeal, 458. 



Vol. vin, No. 4 Repeal of the Missouri Compromise 315 

taking, and the ground should be well surveyed before the first 
step is taken.' The result of this conference is found," he 
added, "in the act, May 30, 1854." 22 

The text of the revised Nebraska bill, submitted to the senate 
by Douglas on the following day, Monday, January 23, satisfied 
Senator Dixon, as is well enough known. Probably it also satis- 
fied Phillips. Both men were eager to obtain, by the doctrine of 
"superseding" one law by another or otherwise, the abrogation 
of the famous eighth section of the act of 1820. 23 But both men 
were better satisfied, it is reasonable to conclude, when Douglas, 
abandoning this peculiar doctrine on or about February 7, 
acknowledged that congress should not be permitted to intervene 
in either states or territories, so far as slavery was concerned, 
and put forward his last amendment to that effect on that day, 
thus making the old eighth section "inoperative and void." The 
doubts of the democrats, particularly of the southern slave- 
holders, slowly but surely vanished as the great series of debates 
proceeded. And on May 30, with the approval of the administra- 
tion, the Missouri compromise had gone into the limbo of 
doctrinaire legislation, never to be revived. 

We obtain just a glimpse of Phillips' thought on the subject 
in his autobiography, when he refers to his amendment as 
follows: "When I made this proposition, I was well satisfied 
that slavery could never be established in the high latitude of 
those territories [i. e. Nebraska and Kansas]. I was actuated 
by what I then regarded as a theoretical right. If the bill had 
organized the territories without referring to the question of 
slavery, I should probably have said nothing. But in the form 
in which it was presented [i. e. on January 4], I regarded it as 

22 Autobiography in manuscript. 

23 Douglas argued that the eighth section of the Missouri act of 1820 had been 
"superseded" by the compromise measures of 1850. The novel and startling aspect 
of this doctrine of supersession, which Douglas advocated as early as January 23, 
was due to the fact that, so far as the writer can discover, no such doctrine had 
ever been suggested between the legislation of the compromise of 1850 and the 
Nebraska bill of January, 1854. The eighth section of the Missouri act of 1820 
remained, according to the usual opinion in 1850, undisturbed. Of course new 
legislation is not infrequently designed to supersede earlier laws. Douglas, however, 
soon abandoned his theory and felt forced by February 7 to go straight to the point 
and declare in so many words that the old section of 1820 was "inoperative and 
void." 



316 Henry Barrett Learned m.v. h. e. 

delusive. That this measure increased the slavery agitation and 
hastened the crisis of 1861 is very probable. ' ' 

On Friday, February 10, there was printed in the Washington 
Union what would appear to have been an inspired editorial in 
that organ, well known to be in the closest touch with President 
Pierce and his cabinet. It was entitled ' i The administration and 
the Nebraska question," and a part of it read as follows: 
Without seeking to interfere with the action of Congress, the President 
has frankly and unreservedly expressed his conviction in favor of the 
principle of congressional non-intervention to all who have sought his 
opinions. As to the form of the proposition, he has not cared to inter- 
pose his preference ; but as to the substance of the proposition, he has 
consulted freely and anxiously. It is an entire mistake to suppose that 
the senators and representatives who have had the subject under their 
charge have not sought the benefit of his consultations, and have not 
secured the approval of his judgment in maturing a subject of so much 
moment. We make this remark with emphasis. . . . The bill, as pro- 
posed to be amended by Mr. Douglas, declaring the Missouri Compromise 
inoperative and void, because it is inconsistent with the principles of 
the Compromise of 1850, and securing to the inhabitants of the Territory 
the right to regulate the subject of slavery for themselves . . . cannot 
fail, when passed, to meet his ready approval. 

Here was a reflection probably made by some one who knew 
the facts concerning the Sunday session of January 22, that 
"secret conclave" in which Philip Phillips had a part. We can- 
not say that he had with him on that occasion his written prop- 
osition. It is reasonably clear, however, that he had already 
committed it to writing, probably, as he recalled, at Douglas' 
request on the Thursday previous. And either he or Douglas 
may have used it as a basis for some discussion ; but of this dis- 
cussion there is no recorded trace. The publicity already given 
to Dixon's amendment since the previous Monday would have 
made it an easy matter for President Pierce and the other mem- 
bers of the conference to discuss that too, had they so desired. 
Neither Phillips' nor Dixon's respective propositions can be 
clearly differentiated in the language of the law. On that 
language both of them, it may plausibly be argued, probably left 
a trace. Only this thought does the writf wish to emphasize 
by way of conclusion: the scanty records left by Philip Phillips 
in manuscript or in print need leave no aoubt that any careful 



Vol. viii, No. 4 Repeal of the Missouri Compromise 317 

study of his career in the thirty-third congress must throw a 
side light on the repeal of the Missouri compromise. Like many 
another, known or unknown to history, he aided the process mak- 
ing for this result. In the writer's judgment, the repeal of the 
Missouri compromise can not be ascribed to any single man. 
The result of an historical process, the repeal was accomplished, 
as everybody knows, in the spring of 1854. Such accomplish- 
ments in legislation as the repeal — whatever we may think of 
them — are rarely brought about without the active efforts and 
earnest cooperation of many minds. 

Henry Barrett Learned 
Washington, D. C. 



W46 



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